@Darth Sonic  
It might be a pointless debate but It’s an interesting look at the differing opinions of how a protagonist should act in a given situation with the given resources and supposed skills they posses.

@Darth Sonic  
Well, I guess I’m the idiot. I should have realized the Rule 0 also included the author, even if she doesn’t post here.
 
My point is that we’re putting more thought into this argument than, by the author’s own admission, was put into the creation of this scene. So this debate is sort of pointless.
 
I hope that doesn’t violate Rule 0?

@Starswirl  
And I don’t believe the life of any single individual is worth that of thousands, crown, hero, or any other title that can be tied to it.  
And more so, if he knew they were being watched he could’ve used it to his advantage, and used tact rather then destabalizing the nation he supposedly cares so much about.

@ExistenceNull  
One of the earlier pages showed Spike and his daughter being watched by soldiers and him fearing for their lives. No, I doubt they could’ve pulled the same trick as Shine Bright, nor am I convinced keeping the truth from a grieving nation when they deserve the truth is the right way to go.

@Starswirl  
And yet he could’ve pulled the same deception she used, feigning ignorance and playing as her friend and advisor, and killed her, free’d the mind controled prince and been done with it, no one but Shine Bright dead.  
And considering the amount of random soldier with no more knowledge of whats really going on then a tree stump, the executions, and civil war, yes I’d say there are nothing but needless deaths is this conflict.

@Starswirl  
I mentioned my objections to how her court would never follow through her orders on this in a comment on artist’s DA.
 
She(iirc?) said I was overthinking it and suggested that Shine Bright carried out the executions herself.
 
Sheesh. Imagine having the supreme princess of the land as your executioner.
 
I still find the basis kind of shaky, though, and think the court would want to/be able to overthrow her and replace her with Cadence and/or Spike.
 
In an oddly karmatic way, I think the only result of her ordering mass executions might be her own, but more likely eternal Tartarus.

@ExistenceNull  
Needless death, hm? Like when she came to power through murder? Also, here’s the thing: Shine Bright declared Spike a traitor. He didn’t start this, she did. All he did was expose the truth, and she reacted with mass murder and declaring him her enemy.
 
And it’s not like Twilight’s people didn’t deserve to know the truth.

@Darth Sonic  
That was entirely my point, there were hundreds of ways he could’ve solved this without instigating everything from mass murder to a civil war.  
I expect someone in a position of power that was stolen to panic and overeach in their efforts to hold on to it, and if this Spike was as militarily skilled as the comic previously stares and shows him to be, he’d know just how much death would be wrought from his entirely selfish need to have a glorious revenge.  
It’s a story thats not fit to have a hero, in any context.@Darth Sonic

@QueenCold  
This is the biggest train wreck you’ve seen on this site? Well, I’ll grant you that it is the most memorable.

@ExistenceNull  
She committed mass murder as a means of supressing Free Speech. That is intolerable in a moral sense.
 
She wields this sort of power in a nation that all signs seem to indicate is the USA style World Hegemon in this setting. That is intolerable in a real politik sense.
 
Granted, Spike was wrong to provoke her like this, so he share some of the blood of the dead on his claws.

@Mr grump  
I don’t even think it’s all that bad. I’ve seen so much worse than this.

Wow, This fan comic is getting disected and deconstructed into oblivion. I kinda feel bad for the artist. It hurts to have your work trashed. I find the Art very nice and the story to be the very definitiom of “narm”.
 
It’s pretty funny even though it’s trying to be dead serious. It’s so bad it’s good.

@Cirrus Light  
I am not going to waste hours of my life explaining everything that is wrong with this. I am really not going to sugarcoat it. This comic is a string of bad decisions, both narratively and artistically. I can not point out a single good choice.  
From the arbitrary combinations of warm and cool colors to the composition and size of each panel, not leaving enough room for the text windows in some, making it where they have to overlap the characters that are supposed to play an important role, while leaving too much empty space in others, which is then half-assedly filled in with reused assets with no sense of perspective, choosing the wrong angles all the time, which makes the scenes leave no real emotional impact, terrible line art that seemingly follows no line of logic, parts they actually forgot to color… this isn’t even everything that is wrong with it from an artistic point of view.  
Artistically, the best panel is the second panel, which is a bland and dull copy-paste job, but at least it settled for a coherent color scheme, even if it’s the color scheme of poop.
 
I am not even going touch the story, because there isn’t even a structure for me to dissect.

Justice!

@QueenCold  
Harsh. But I think I can see where you’re coming from. His first few were great and popular - he almost certainly was trying to continue that success. Why start something new that people will probably barely acknowledge when you could continue something that got a lot of attention and love?
 
I take it you’re not a fan of all the OCs, ships, and grimdark in the cutesy art style?
 
I don’t know if he realizes there’s a difference in-between “death” and “grimdark death”. But maybe he does and just thought grimdark would work with this art style?
 
And the minimal detail thing on the hanging panel just makes it look like there’s a bunch of hanging copy and pasted mannequins :q
 
But, I don’t mean to be too harsh. I feel bad saying bad things about something someone has worked on, but mistakes were definitely made. If he wanted to go grimdark he should’ve done a style more conducive to that. Also it’s a stretch, how evil Shine Bright is when nopony but Sombra has gone so far, and he certainly didn’t pretend to be good for so long. A complete psychopath will probably be noticeable when you’re her mentor. Or maybe I just feel that way because of the art style.
 
And something that started cute and feelsey because of the cuteness and how much that theme of “passing time” relates to all of us has lost both of those elements in favor of action movie plots of intrigue and betrayal.

You know, I’ve been aware of this comic for some time but I haven’t said anything until now.  
This comic is the biggest trainwreck I have ever seen on this website and that says a lot.  
There is no need for me to defend my position, because it is irredeemable. If you cannot see the utter lack of anything good here, then there is absolutely nothing I can say that’ll change your mind. Before you start, save me the “quality is subjective” lecture. Quality is not subjective, enjoyment is and color me impressed if you are actually able to enjoy this. By all means, keep enjoying it. You’re having a far better time than the rest of us.  
I am not one to tell others what they should spend their money on, but the fact that the artist is proud enough to slap a patreon link on it tells me they have absolutely no understanding of what constitutes as value, let alone excellence.

@ExistenceNull  
I’m pretty sure the implication the writers made was that Sombra, Nightmare Moon, etc. were so powerful that even if you armed them and trained them better, you’d still be throwing bodies at them.
 
I’m not sure the Royal Guard is actually incompetent as much as they just face powerful enemies and they’re constantly the victim of the Worf effect. If a threat was handled by the guards, it wouldn’t be the subject of the show because the main cast wouldn’t be involved since none of them are guards.
 
And yeah, you’d try to save as many people as you can, but the difference is Celestia actually did, meanwhile your proposed course of action would almost certainly result in at least one more death than hers did, if not many, many more deaths.
 
And leaving threats alive is both merciful and turned out to be invaluable with Discord now on their side. She’s managed to not only avoid the greater evil, but avoid the lesser evil as well.
 
It’s not something I actually like all that much in fiction because I don’t think us mere mortals can make those kinds of choices. If we kept taking the unlikely but best route, we’d see a lot of terrible things happen because we don’t posses a supernatural foresight and whatever ability it is that Celestia has to find, and carry out that one impossible route that ends with nobody dying (with Sombra as the one exception to date - I theorize that he actually had ponies put to death, as part of the reason for this).
 
And yes, I’m a fan of mercy when there was no malice in the heart of the perpatrator, or when they are actually penitent. The problem is people can fake this, but so far, Celestia seems to have avoided being tricked and rewarded mercy correctly. There’s a reason that governors and other high executive authorities are able to issue pardons.
 
Justice has its place, sure, but I’m also a fan of mercy.
 
As for canon scenes - I’m looking a bit more at what Celestia is clearly meant to be, rather than what she literally is if you take the show at face value.
 
And even then, you can’t argue that her decisions have always, somehow, turned out to work. Perhaps it’s dumb luck, or perhaps she sees things in a way we don’t with her 1,000+ year old wisdom.
 

 
@Zeb  
Oh, sorry, Ninja’d. I’ll stop here.

Alright, I think that’s more than enough in here.
 
Image comments are not the place to hold these kind of lengthy discussions. If you want to continue it, move it to PMs, or the Forums. But not here.

@Cirrus Light  
And you’re assuming I’d leave everyone ignorant and ill prepared to face things as she has. I’d actually arm my soldiers with competence and decent weapons, armor not made for parades and parties, and train them all to be skilled flyers, sheild bearers, spearmen, mages, ect and tell them what I know of the threat, rather then throwing bodies at them like you propose.  
I’m sorry, But if my sibling is going to destroy the world, I’m not hesitating to save as many people as I can.  
Also, yeah she’s done good.  
But it hasn’t taken much effort if things are simple now does it?  
She cares. Yeah, but the problem is she coddles them to the point where their military is worthless.  
In the long term with any competent threat, no “I’ll sit here and monolouge, or I’ll leave all the threats to my coup alive”, she’s worthless. As shown by all of the alternate time lines from the season 5 finale.  
So…I guess those cannon scenes mean crap to you? Alright.  
And yeah, I hold saints to a higher level then a sinner, after all, how many people are going to follow the criminal compared to the one that saved the world? Or is the concept of actual blind, unbiased justice an atrocity to you?  
I see you’ll follow every light in the dark even if they’d lead you to a cliff in the distance if they have happy times in the present.

@ExistenceNull  
We know nothing of how much they’ve progressed, so again, stop making assumptions then throwing the blame on Celestia.
 
Bring up all the crap you want, fact is she’s still been successful, and has constantly faced threats and super-powerful beings that Earth has never faced. She didn’t want Luna’s return to turn into a bloodbath in-between soldiers and her sister, she wanted her sister reformed, and got that.
 
Same thing can mostly be said for Sombra. And again, you’re assuming that Canterlot is vulnerable and weak, prone to falling off the mountain. We don’t know that.
 
Starswirl made the amulet? A) where’d you get that, and B) why do you think that that would automatically mean the sisters would know where it is just because they knew Starswirl?
 
Again, ultimately, this is the limitations of the writers more than Celestia herself. Celestia is never intentionally depicted as incompetent, so much as the villains are supposed to be extremely competent, but the writers can’t seem to really figure things out as intricately as they need to to satisfy, well, you.
 
You’re completely missing the mark on what Celestia is, though. She’s very, very clearly meant to care for her ponies, and again, there seems to be little to no poverty in Equestria, and the society is very socially rich. It’s a magical world that makes enemies and resolves them with dues ex. If they had Celestia be too powerful, there wouldn’t be enough risk. And what point is there in sending an army if she knows Sombra will just crush them all? Possibly she’s busy raising one to defend Equestria against a possible war. You don’t know what she’s doing, you just know one thing she’s not, and whatever strategy you would’ve used would not have turned out as well, given that these things have all resolved very well.
 
You would’ve sent an army to a bloodbath of death to Nightmare Moon, either killing your beloved sister, or putting a tremendous amount of blood on her hooves to make her pretty much unforgivable to the public, so even if you can free Luna from NMM, they’d all demand her death.
 
You would’ve sent armies to die in the frozen North, probably ill-prepared to encounter what was coming.
 
And if you think a world where some of the mane six are in jail right now is better than the current one the show is showing, then I’m really not much a fan of your ideas at all, and every brony who felt furious and helpless against Starlight when the mane 6 were imprisoned should be just as furious at you.
 
So I’d hardly say she’s done nearly as bad as you would have, she’s taken actions that have led to the best possible ending, and in Equestria, things worked out great. It is a “magical land” with harmony magic, after all.

@Cirrus Light  
Alright, first: I did space them, sorry being on a phone screws with the indenting.  
Second, ruling an empire with no theological, political, nor technological leaps in centuries is nowhere near as difficult as ruling a nation that isn’t stagnant as dirt in these departments.  
Luna returns, okay boys, no soldiers, save the sods that got hospitalized because I didn’t tell anyone and lied straight to someones face. My student, whom I’ve done nothing to curb the antisocial, obsessive cumpulsive nature of for upwards of ten years is guaranteed to save us! Nothing can go wrong…  
I’m sorry if I expect the one in charge of a minor and an apprentice that’s close enough to be family to actually care about their mental health and ability to function outside of that specific set of enviroments.  
Sunset was clearly arrogant. She was clearly cruel and malicious. Celestia did nothing to address this till she realized Sunset isn’t going to bring Luna back.  
And at that, I have little issue with the first incident with Luna. In fact, Luna herself lends little to my dislike of Celestia, rather I’m more dumbfounded at the shear amount of pride and self entitlement Celestia had to have to bring about the situation in the first place.  
So The Discord incident can just be ignored? Completely. Yeah no, I’d be demanding the crown pay for damages because of incompetent prison design and failure to contain a known threat in favor of having a garden gnome and removing the information from history and public records.  
Yes, a shield cast by a single individual, hardly impenetrable if under near constant stress. And Canterlot is set on a disk of stone and metal jutting out the side of a mountain on struts like a carribian condominium. We see this multiple times when we get panning shots of the place.  
One infiltraitor with bombs will drop that like a pizza falling out an oven.  
How is Canterlots’ design the fault of the official who greenlit the construction, oversaw the architect designing it, and more then likely chose the location. I’m not going to even bother with that one, mostly because: REALLY?  
Sombra is a sign of complete negligence. She knew about the empire, and in the comics assigned the previous ruler, someone completely incompetent I might add, and had ever bit of knowledge that would have helped save the actual location of the heart at that exact time.  
She had a train station, and rails which aren’t cheap, pushed into the arctic and maintained for the occasion.  
She could have stationed a garrison to run interference and educated the guard and common people on their own history but screw it.  
Thats just, well, stupid. I wouldn’t send in a Seals team with nothing but: We know nothing but the lights from the tower, but I’m sure you’ll all pull something out of the deus ex machina pile.  
Add to this that the Crystal Ponies are apparently only worth a percentile score for a test and I’m particularly disgusted with Celestia’s lack of care.  
The amulet may have been in a shop, but who made it? Starswirl.  
Who was close friends, and was taught by Starswirl? The sisters.  
Who had explicit knowledge of and more then likely informed the author of the book about said amulet? All three of them.  
Who allowed the gross miscarriege of justice that had a stage performer blamed for the shear incompetence and stupidity of two foals who thought dragging a monster into their hometown was a brilliant idea?  
I don’t know, but Twilight sure did relay the message to Celestia, treat the two foals like they did something brilliant, and Celestia did diddly to see her laws and Harmony upheld.  
Add to this the seemingly untouchable nature of the bearers and I’m hard pressed to like the amount of free passes they get from what would put anyone else in prison from what we’ve seen of the minor villains in the show.  
And the Amulet being right under Celestia’s nose doesn’t help this.  
Until I’m shown an actual guard for Tartarus I’m not buying it’s actually a defended position outside of the guard dog, since it being gone somehow let one of the worst criminals in their history escape.  
Either that or the Tartarian guard are even dumber then the regular guard.  
And you can have the guards be competent, just make the villians more so and the protagonist somewhat between the two, seeing as they pull a victory from thin air regardless.

@ExistenceNull  
And still she pulled through and secured Equestria’s future for possibly millenia. If they failed to stop Sombra, then she was right to stay in Canterlot so that all her proverbial eggs wouldn’t be in the basket in the crystal empire. And Twilight wasn’t being taught, she was being tested.
 
As for that second “paragraph” (seriously, space those things correctly, it’s hard to read), … You know, I think we’ve had this conversation before. Basically, those aren’t her fault, and we established that. She tried to fix Twilight’s asocial nature by introducing her to friends, and that turned out well. Twilight’s freak out was entirely Twilight’s own fault, not Celestia’s for asking for a report every week from a pony who loves school-like assignments. Iirc, for some reason you’ve got some sort of hate-streak for random lovable characters so you like to somehow assign all the blame for Luna’s betrayal, Twilight’s meltdown, and Sunset’s betrayal all on Celestia.
 
I’ll be sure to remind Jesus that Judas’ betrayal was his fault, and if your best friend one day snaps and turns on you, that’s entirely your fault, too, right? I mean, hey, nobody gets betrayed or has someone try to kill them without being the fault for it, right?
 
And what are you going on about in the third paragraph? We don’t have canon on the time leading up to Luna’s transformation, what we do have is that she very much didn’t do exactly what you said. She put her nation before her sister by banishing her to the moon. Go send off your beloved sibling for a thousand years for the good of a nation you rule and then tell me how selfish she is.
 
And the comics are kinda eh. They’re hit and miss. I’d have to see what you’re talking about to really care.
 
How is Canterlot’s design her fault? And you assume it’s weak enough for any war mage to destroy. We’ve seen shields that can cover the entire thing, and for all we know it’s as solidly on there as mountain itself. So that’s pure conjecture and I’m not accepting it. If anything, the side of a mountain is a very defensible position.
 
As for artifacts, the Alicorn Amulet wasn’t in her possession. It was in some small shop in an alleyway, who knows if it was legal or not, and then we could have a political argument about whether the citizens should be allowed to have powerful artifacts or not.
 
Episode 100 is flimsy on how seriously we should take it, and given the mane 6’s effectiveness, it’s arguable whether that money is better spent on those agencies or, say, public health or education.
 
As for Tartarus, again it was a passing reference which was questionable in how seriously we were supposed to take it, which later writers used as a point for Tirek’s escape.
 
Basically, yes, villains appear, break out of statues they’re in, escape from tartarus, and the guard gets destroyed by super-beings. That’s really more the fault of the writers than Celestia, because the writers have to make these things happen in order to have a story.
 
However, though, it’s rather clearly meant to be portrayed that Celestia is a good princess, and she seems to have ruled her empire for far more success for 1,000 years than we humans have ever done. We’ve had crusades, slavery, China had a particularly horrible abuse of its peasants - yet Equestria seems to have little to none of that, and a fantastic culture of friendship. If we could do as well as Equestria - especially given the constant threats the writers throw at it, then I’d say that would be a huge improvement for the human race.

@Cirrus Light  
Those risks put millions in danger, and she had no plan B, in any form. And these lessons could’ve been taught a thousand different ways without the risk.  
She’s a failure at training and teaching, shown by the track record of psychologically faults she ignored or outright berated her students for.  
She put her sister, as a ruler of a nation, before her entire kingdom, and arguably the entire world without informing or giving the other nations any form of warning. And thats got to have caused problems and potentially deaths depending on the areas.  
Discord being stored in a public place, regardless of his sealed nature, is the most braindead maneuver she could have done with him. Put him in a private chamber, put seals around the statue to delay his release as a precaution, have the court mages actually develop counter measures. Because just being sure the ancient artifacts no one understands completely will last forever is just moronic.  
Depending on whether or not you consider the comics partially cannon or not, she’s commited massive atrocities in the form of warcrimes and the torture of children and the young of her foes, as well as torture far beyond mortal means, and manipulated history to keep her people borderline isolationist in their knowledge of the world and their interactions with it.  
Her guard are genuinely worthless, and fail in even the most simple conflict. And she lets this happen. While using mediocre armor and weaponry.  
Now on to the things that are observed but never really adressed in show or comics, save as passing quips or a basic knowledge of military tactics and infrastructure.  
Her capital is a death trap, the supports are a weakness any competent war mage could take full advantage of, and evacuation would be impossible.  
Her constant knowledge of many artifacts shown to be dangerous, and yet made no effort to destroy them while in her possession, prime example being a certain Amulet, and instead keeping them around for what can only be considered sentiment with the danger they pose.  
Her seeming dependence on the Elements and the ‘Rainbow Power’to the point of disolving government sectors set to act as comparable countermeasures, Agent Sweetie Drops/Bon Bon’s agency as a prime example.  
Tartarus has a guard dog. And thats it. I don’t think I need to explain more here.

@ExistenceNull  
Okay, what makes Celestia despise-worthy?
 
Is it how she takes risks in order to train Twilight to ensure that Equestria will have a good ruler for future millenia when she passes on?
 
Is it that she trusted Discord too much and almost failed to Tirek because she sent practically a god to handle a being that could absorb ponies’ magic instead of sending a beloved pony with a huge amount of magic for Tirek to feast on?
 
Or is it one of the things listed here? >>77936
 
I’d really freakin’ like to know, ‘cause I’d give anything to have a nigh-immortal monarch rule our world that has managed to create peace and prosperity and an absolutely miraculously lovely culture in her kingdom for over a thousand years, all the while never caving in to corruption and somehow remaining in power the whole time and keeping her nation free and prosperous.
 

 
Anyways, my earlier comments were kind of saying that realistically speaking, yeah, Spike would’ve had playing politics as an option, but who knows how good he is at playing politics, and how great he perceived the danger from Shine to be. I wouldn’t fault him for his decisions. Maybe he could’ve done it better, but it’s always hypocritical to judge someone who’s taken the safer path, when you yourself have never faced such danger.